When the AK-47s Fall Silent: Revolutionaries, Guerrillas, and the Dangers of Peace

Summary

The majority of Latin American revolutionaries and guerrillas have now laid down their weapons and opted to participate in that region's democratic processes. What brought about this transformation? When the AK-47s Fall Silent brings together for the first time many of these former Latin revolutionaries from both sides of the conflicts—who tell their own stories, in their own words.

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When the AK-47s Fall Silent - Timothy C. Brown

reality.

1

¡HIJO DE PUTA! WHY DID WE EVER FIGHT?

It was not your typical academic panel. True, the setting was delightful, the warmly decorated main auditorium of Mexico’s most elite private university. But the host, the Universidad de Las Américas (UDLA) in Puebla, Mexico, had felt called on quietly to beef up security, so there were additional police waiting in the wings, just in case. Many in the audience were visibly nervous, asking one another if it was safe to be there. Even the panelists I had brought together were worried lest violence break out, and several asked me as organizer and moderator, only half jokingly, if I was sure their fellow panelists had left their AK-47s at home. The event was the first ever face-to-face encounter between former radical revolutionaries and Nicaraguan Contra guerrillas, between leaders of Nicaragua’s original Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), El Salvador’s Faribundo Martí Liberation Front (FMLN) and the Mexican revolutionaries who had supported them, and equally prominent though less well-known commanders of two of Nicaragua’s democratic Resistance Contra armies, the Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense (FDN) and the Miskito Indian Yapti Tasba Masraka Nana Asia Takanka (YATAMA).

The fears were understandable because all the panelists were veterans of very violent conflicts and, until just recently, had been mortal enemies fighting on opposite sides of exceedingly bloody wars. But they need not have worried. Immediately after the first two sessions, three former top Contras, Comandantes Rubén (after Nicaraguan poet Rubén Dario) and Tigrillo (Wildcat) of the FDN and Blass (after an historic Miskito Indian hero) of the Miskito Indian Resistance, rushed up to me to say: "¡Hijo de puta! Son of a b———! We were really worried when you invited us because we thought you were dropping us into a nest of Sandinistas. But they’re more Contras than we are!"

They wanted to talk longer, but the international and Mexican press were swarming around us, and all three were quickly drawn away for interviews. As soon as they went off to talk with journalists, the other three panelists and a Mexican revolutionary who was with them surrounded me: Fermán Cienfuegos of El Salvador’s FMLN, Comandantes Marcial and Martínez of the FSLN, and Pepe Puente, a second-generation Mexican Marxist revolutionary. Fermán Cienfuegos summed up their reaction: "¡Hijo de puta! Son of a b———! Why did we ever fight one another? They think just like we do. If we had known who they really were, there never would have been any wars!"

Both reactions were perhaps a bit tinted by the emotions of the moment, but they were essentially accurate. Whether revolutionary or guerrilla, all the panelists had in common deep commitments to the well-being of their countrymen, an earlier willingness to put their lives on the line in support of their convictions, and hard-earned new convictions that Central America’s wars were both unnecessary and unnecessarily bloody. All still remain committed to the struggle to resolve their region’s myriad problems, but they are now dedicated to doing to do so via the ballot box, not out of the barrels of their AK-47s.

This book is divided into three parts. Each of the twelve participants speaks for himself or herself only. Part I, Revolutionaries, and part II, Guerrillas, are more descriptive than prescriptive. Part III, The Dangers of Peace, is more prescriptive and is especially valuable in that it suggests field-tested models for peacemakers to follow.

Part I contains five essays or autobiographical commentaries by former revolutionaries whose personal experiences span Central America’s twentieth-century conflicts, from the rebellion of Sandino in the 1920s to the resolution of the war in El Salvador in the mid-1990s. Part II presents commentaries by four guerrillas of the Nicaraguan Resistance, including one who is a bridge between the Sandinistas and the Contras; a female comando (as Contra combatants called themselves);¹ an indigenous force commander; and the last chief of staff of the Contras. Part III features three international public servants who have dedicated their lives to trying to resolve conflicts: an American ambassador, a Canadian general with the United Nations (U.N.), and a peacemaker from the Organization of American States (OAS).

Three of those whose views are presented in this book were not actually panelists at Puebla: one because he was over ninety years old and frail, one because the U.S. Immigration Service refused to issue her a timely travel document, and one because he was not yet ready to go public. But their comments are at least as valuable as those by panelists who did appear. Chapter 2 is the remarkable story of a radical Mexican revolutionary, José Obidio Pepe Puente León, and is told here in detail for the first time. He and his family have for generations played key, if almost entirely unknown, roles in half a dozen revolutionary movements, from Nicaragua’s original Sandino uprising to Fidel Castro’s march to the Sierra Maestra of Cuba to more recent armed conflicts in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Puente’s essay begins the book because he is a living organic link between the Mexican Revolution, the original Sandino’s resistance to the American Marines, Castro’s Cuban Revolution, Cuban and Soviet involvement in Latin America’s revolutions during the cold war, both the 1963–1979 anti-Somoza Sandinista uprising and the 1979–1990 Sandinista socialist revolution, and unsuccessful radical attempts at revolutions in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Don Alejandro Pérez Bustamante, whose story is told in chapter 3, was the personal bodyguard to legendary Nicaraguan general Augústo César Sandino; it was to him that the namesake of Nicaragua’s revolutionary movement entrusted his very life. Decades later, he was a Resistance (Contra) correo, or clandestine network chief, to whom hundreds of Nicaraguan Contra comandos entrusted their own lives.

Chapters 4 through 6 are by top radical guerrilla leaders. Alejandro Martínez was a conservative anti-Somoza combatant in the 1940s, fought in numerous guerrilla campaigns, became a senior field commander for the Sandinistas, was pushed aside when he objected to the post-Somoza socialist revolution, and then became an anti-Sandinista commander and the first choice of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1980 to head up the Contra movement.² Plutarco Hernández was a lifelong revolutionary and a national director of the Sandinista Front for more than a decade; he was a principal architect of that Front’s clandestine training, recruitment, and communications systems inside Nicaragua during the war against Somoza. But he too turned against the Sandinista Revolution after 1979. In 1998 he was Costa Rica’s ambassador to Russia. Fermán Cienfuegos, the author of chapter 6, was the military commander of El Salvador’s radical FMLN movement for two decades. Cienfuegos is Hernández’s first cousin.

Part II begins with a legendary peasant guerrilla leader, Encarnacíon Baldivia, Tigrillo, who was first an anti-Somoza combat leader, then a founding leader of the peasant-generated Milicias Populares Anti-Sandinistas (MILPAS) guerrilla movement that was the precursor to the Contras. In 1998 he was a Liberal Party peasant leader. He is followed by a second founding leader of the MILPAS, Oscar Sobalvarro Garcia, Rubén, who went on to become the last chief of staff of the main Contra army, the FDN, and president of their postwar veterans’ organization, the Asociación Cívica Resistencia Nicaragüense (ACRN). The final two guerrillas are Saris Pérez, Angélica María, a woman comando and ranger, and Salomón Osorno Coleman, Comandante Blass, the chief of staff of the Miskito Indian Resistance’s YATAMA army. When added together, the nine former revolutionaries and guerrillas whose thoughts are collected here have almost 250 years’ experience at revolution and guerrilla warfare.

Part III changes the focus from one of insider descriptions and commentaries by armed participants in Latin America’s recent wars to one centered on efforts to help resolve both these conflicts and their underlying social conditions. The last three essayists draw lessons from the wars that the first nine fought. The former United States ambassador to Colombia, Myles Robert René Frechette, describes the ongoing and exceedingly bloody revolutionary conflicts in that country. At first blush his contribution may seem out of place. But readers are asked to keep it clearly in mind when reading the next two because the purpose here is not merely to describe what happened in the past but to suggest how we can do better in the future.

Ambassador Frechette’s essay is followed by the contribution of Canadian major general Ian Douglas, the original commander of the U.N. International (military) Observer Force in Central America (ONUCA), who discusses the process of disarming a guerrilla force, lessons learned by the U.N. in Central America, and why he believes ONUCA failed in its larger mission. Although disarmament was technically successful, Douglas has since become convinced that it is only the first step in a much more complex process and that in the larger sense his mission failed because the U.N., which depended on public discourse rather than dispassionate analysis for its information, was badly misled as to the real identity of those with whom it dealt and the roots of the conflict they were supposed to help end.³

In terms of broad implications, the final contribution, by Sergio Caramagna, the representative of the secretary general of the OAS in Nicaragua in 1997–1999, is of exceptional interest. It deals with the process of reinserting former guerrillas and their families back into civil society and is the product of nine years’ hands-on experience trying to bring peace to Nicaragua’s countryside well after the Contras laid down their AK-47s. As did General Douglas, Caramagna also found that his mission initially failed because its design was based on wartime propaganda images that did not reflect reality. But, unlike ONUCA, the OAS stayed long enough to correct its mistakes by learning who the people they were assigned to help really were and by successfully shifting its emphasis from treating them as maligned objects to dealing with them as human subjects, which allowed it to abandon its original propaganda-based programs that failed in favor of reality-based efforts that worked. Drawing on these new and successful reality-based efforts, Caramagna provides an exceptional and probably unique first-draft manual for peacemakers based on the lessons learned from the experience.

In many ways this work has been a labor of love, since my own experience in Central America dates back to my youth many years ago. After five wars, ten years as a Marine, twenty-seven years in diplomatic service, and eight years in academia, I remain fascinated by the region. Even more, I consider all the panelists personal friends. I have known Comandante Marcial, former Sandinista national director Plutarco Hernández, for more than forty years, all the Contras and General Douglas and Sergio Caramagna for over a decade, and Ambassador Frechette since he was my boss in the 1970s. My friendships with Fermán Cienfuegos and Pepe Puente are more recent. But all twelve have helped me better understand what happened in Central America and, even more important, each has demonstrated commitment to ending revolutionary violence in Latin America by silencing the region’s AK-47s and then continuing the struggle to right the region’s historical wrongs, but via the ballot box, not out of the barrel of a gun.

Those well versed in the standard historical versions of the events discussed by these participants will quickly find that what they say happened often differs sharply from the conventional wisdom. For example, Pepe Puente says his father and PEMEX paid Fidel Castro’s bills in Mexico; Alejandro Martínez says he saw missiles in Cuba after the Cuban missile crisis; Fermán Cienfuegos says the FMLN helped finance the Sandinista revolution; several say Carter not Reagan first offered the Contras covert paramilitary aid; and so forth. It should be kept in mind that while the bona fides of each participant were thoroughly confirmed, and I made considerable effort to document when possible their assertions, these are personal narratives not scholarly treatises. These then are their stories, which are well worth listening to.

PART I

REVOLUTIONARIES

2

JOSÉ OBIDIO PEPE PUENTE LEÓN, THE LIVING LINK

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

José Obidio Pepe Puente León was born in Tamualipas, Mexico. At the tender age of twelve, Puente’s father met and fell under the spell of Nicaraguan rebel General Augústo César Sandino, beginning a personal lifelong commitment to revolution and to creating an organic link between his family and Nicaragua. His father later became a lifelong senior official of Mexico’s Sindicato de Trabajadores de Petróleo de la República Mexicana (STPRM). In 1954 Pepe’s father introduced him to both the real leader of Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolutionary movement, Noél Guerrero Santiago, and the founders of the Cuban Revolution.¹ Pepe went on to become a key link between the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City and the Sandinista movement, but he was closest to the original Sandinista revolutionaries and took his distance from the better known Nine Comandantos who took control of the movement after July 1979 and then led Nicaragua’s unsuccessful 1979–1990 socialist revolution. In 1998 he was an aide to Mexico City Mayor Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, leader of Mexico’s Partido Revolucionario Democratico (PRD) and son of former President Lázaro Cárdenas. Here for the first time Puente speaks publicly about his journey from radical revolutionary to participant in the democratic process.

THE ROAD FROM SANDINO TO SANDINISMO, AND BACK

José Obidio Pepe Puente León (as told to the editor)²

Truth above all else. What I say here is both difficult and dangerous but is the truth as I know it based on my lifelong personal participation in revolutionary movements in the Americas, especially the two most important ones, those of Cuba and Nicaragua. For me, at the times of their inceptions, prosecutions, and triumphs, they were two of the world’s most historically beautiful attempts at revolution and earned themselves the sympathies of peoples and governments throughout the world.³ Yet after their triumphs, both went sour.

All my revolutionary life I was a Marxist–Leninist and acted accordingly. But since ending my participation in violent revolutions, I have begun analyzing my experiences, especially my mistakes, and now realize that when I was younger I was too carried away by the currents of the historical moment. A convinced Marxist–Leninist never hesitates to act, either politically or by engaging in armed conflict if the conditions of the moment seem appropriate, and I was certainly a Marxist child of the moment. But many years have passed and I am no longer afraid to tell my story, nor do I fear the consequences.

The names of my children demonstrate how dedicated I was to world revolution, and even the house I live in has a profound revolutionary history because for many years it was the principal safe house in Mexico City of the Sandinista revolution. All six of my children are named after revolutionary heroes. The first, Eva Fidelia, after Fidel Castro, was born when I still admired him; my second, Lenin Obidio, after Lenin; my third, Illia, after Lenin’s father; my fourth, Sandino Stalin; my fifth, Engels Marx; and my sixth, Stokely Mao, born during a period when I was flirting with Maoism and also a great admirer of the American Black Power movement and its leader, Stokely Carmichael. A full-wall mural in my living room depicts these and my other heroes. At the top center is a medallion of Marx and Engels. Below them, starting on the left to the right, are Lenin, then Stalin, followed by Mao Tse Tung, Sandino, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara. Stokely Carmichael is in an Africa-shaped tree above Sandino. Nicaragua and Bolivia, which had active revolutionary movements when it was painted, are highlighted on a map insert, as is the United States, which is exploding.⁴

Being the Son of a Son of Sandino

To understand how I became such a dedicated Marxist revolutionary, first you must understand my family background, especially my father. My family home is in the town of Ciudad Madero near Veracrúz. My father was born nearby and at the age of eight began working as a water boy for a foreign oil company owned by a British corporation, carrying water to the workers and for the radiators of motors in buckets hung from the ends of a long pole on ropes. In those days there were no laws or rules protecting workers, and it wasn’t at all unusual for someone his age to work in the oil fields. But he was ambitious, and evenings after work he kept studying until he earned his elementary school certificate, and then went on to earn a certificate as a secretary.

One of the most popular men in the oil fields where my father worked was a Nicaraguan by the name of Augústo César Sandino. In fact, as far as many of the Mexican workers were concerned, he was the most important man in the area because he had worked there once before, then gone back to Nicaragua to fight for his country, then come back, and made it no secret he was preparing to go back a second time. Sandino not only made no secret of his plans but also took advantage of two favorable conditions. First, there was a great deal of animosity against Americans among the people of the Veracrúz area at the time because, just a few years before, American Marines had occupied the region by force, and it was against the American Marines in Nicaragua that Sandino was preparing to fight. And second, there was deep unhappiness among the workers with their foreign bosses, British, Dutch, German, and others, all of whom exploited them unmercifully. So anyone planning to tweak the noses of the imperialists was a hero, and Sandino tapped readily both these sources of unhappiness.

For many of the same reasons Sandino also garnered the sympathies of many Mexican officials and local politicians, who also believed strongly in the struggle against imperialism. His ideas were as popular with them as with the workers, and his reputation grew by word of mouth, often at public events which many of these leaders attended, dances and fiestas, at which one of the most popular forms of entertainment was the singing of popular songs or recitation of poems, many of them in support of Sandino and his struggle. My father often told me how, when he was only twelve years old, he himself met Sandino and, though just a child, began helping collect money to meet Sandino’s goal of $5,000, which he said he needed to go back to Nicaragua. During his time in the oil fields Sandino sold gasoline and cooking gas and traveled extensively as part of his job. My father remembered him as well-educated, very ideological, and very popular even with management, because he spoke English and served them as an interpreter and was also able to gain of the confidence of the workers because he was popular among them.

An important but little-known source of support for Sandino also came from the region’s Masonic lodges, which hosted many of the dances and fiestas in their halls, in part because Sandino himself was a Mason, as was my father later on. Sandino also caught the eye of two other Masons, then Governor Emilio Pórtes Gil and General Lázaro Cárdenas, then military commander in Veracrúz, both later presidents of Mexico in their own rights. Pórtes Gil decided to support Sandino and his cause and began to channel government money and other help to him, including providing him with transport back to Nicaragua. Cárdenas, as military zone commander in Veracrúz, had personal contact with Sandino but would not have provided that kind of help without the approval of the governor. But because of this support, the government gave Sandino arms from its arsenals and assigned army officers to him as advisors.⁵ Lázaro Cárdenas was probably the officer in charge. Even after Sandino returned to Nicaragua and began fighting the American Marines, Mexico apparently continued to ship him arms and recruits through Tampíco, transporting them as well as arms purchased by sympathizers in the United States to him.⁶ Many private citizens also did what they could to support Sandino, and money was sent to him from sympathizers within several of the oil companies.

My father told me several Mexicans who went to fight alongside Sandino were killed in combat, including some army soldiers, and I later met several who had been with him, including Andrés Garcia Salgado and Francisco Cortéz, and talked to them about their experiences. They confirmed that many Mexicans had fought alongside Sandino, including officers of the Mexican army, and even some troops, and that several Mexican army soldiers had died in combat against the American Marines. Knowing how Mexicans felt about the United States Marines during that period, I have no doubts they were telling the truth.

It was at this time that my father became politically radicalized, which led later to his joining the Communist Party. As he grew into a teenager, he became conscious of the class differences between the foreigners managing Mexico’s oil industry and the Mexicans doing the work and was one of the first oil field workers to organize a labor union by pulling together the existing mutual aid societies of several of the oil companies. He went on to become secretary-general of the Sindicato de Trabajadores de Petróleo de la Republica Mexicana [STPRM], Mexico’s national oil worker’s union, in the 1940s for a short while and continued in the Communist Party and as a union leader for the rest of his life.

I grew up in this Communist Party–labor union environment and spent as much time as I could with my father in union halls, in organizing sessions, absorbing his ideas. Until 1945 my father’s communism was no problem. But then the government of Mexico passed into the hands of a more conservative president, Miguel Alemán, who moved against the STPRM and specifically against my father. He had earned Alemán’s personal enmity when, in 1945, he ordered the members of his Ciudad Madero STPRM Local not to vote for the PRI [Partido Revolucionario Institucional] and the government party lost the election there, the only municipality they lost in all of Mexico. Once president, Alemán ordered the army into the STPRM’s union halls, and my father and those who followed him were kicked out. By then I already considered myself a Marxist and remember being very happy when the same year the Soviet Union took over Berlin and Eastern Europe. Imagine! By the age of ten I was already a Stalinist.

From 1945 until 1950 my father’s situation was difficult. Then it got worse. In 1950 the PRI split, and a retired general, Enrique Guzmán, supported by Lázaro Cárdenas and several other generals, ran against it in the national elections. My father was their candidate for congress from Ciudad Madero, and I was active in his campaign. I was working in the early mornings delivering milk and selling newspapers and put up posters of my father as I went on my rounds. But my father lost and was pushed even further aside for a while. But still he remained very active in the union and the oil fields and retained a great deal of influence. After a while he began working on union and oil industry programs in Mexico City, including running training programs, while I finished my education at a private high school.

Noél Guerrero Santiago, the Original Sandinista

After I graduated from high school I wanted to study engineering at the Universidad Nacionál Autónoma de México [UNAM], so my father brought me to Mexico City, where he introduced me to his friends from the oil world as he tried to set me up. One of his closest contacts was an advisor on union affairs to the STPRM and other major Mexican labor unions who turned out to be a lifelong Marxist–Leninist Nicaraguan by the name of Noél Guerrero Santiago. At the time, Guerrero was close to Mexico’s top labor union leader, Vicente Lombardo Toledano. Just a few days after I met him in the offices of STPRM Local 34 in Mexico City, my father received a call, I believe it was from Lombardo Toledano, saying Guerrero had been arrested by Mexican immigration and was in a jail on Avenida Miguel Schultz and asking my father to go see him, which we did immediately.⁷

Fidel, Che, and Other Cuban Revolutionaries

To our surprise, on our first visit Guerrero introduced us to some Cubans who were also being held there, led by Fidel Castro and including Fidel’s brother Raúl, Ernesto Che Guevara, Ramiro Valdéz, Juanito Almeida, Camilo Cienfuegos, and several others. They had been detained by the police at a guerrilla training camp on the slopes of Popocatepetl Volcano near Mexico City close to a village called Amecameca. There was apparently no connection between the arrest of Guerrero and the detentions of Fidel and his group. Guerrero’s problem was basically a matter of immigration. Castro’s was far more serious because the Cubans had been carrying arms without permission, were clearly involved in preparing for an armed conflict, and were accused of violating Mexico’s sovereignty. But both problems were resolved in the typical Mexican manner, by having powerful friends intervene on their behalf, not least Lázaro Cárdenas and Vicente Lombardo Toledano, two of the most powerful men in Mexico.⁸ Many Mexicans of the time were quite sympathetic to Castro because of his earlier assault on Cuba’s Moncada Barracks, so even though he had been engaged in what normally would have been an inexcusable violation of Mexican territory, they were able to intervene to free him. But it took almost two months. So while they waited in jail my father and I visited them often. Classes at UNAM didn’t start until February and I had little else to do, so even when my father couldn’t make it I went to see them almost every day, especially Castro’s group, and took them fresh fruit and vegetables my father bought for them.

One visit stands out in my mind above the rest, when Fidel told us he was organizing an expedition to go to Cuba to fight against the Batista dictatorship and had been given a boat, the Granma,⁹ by his brother-in-law, a Mexican engineer married to Fidel’s sister Emma, who still lives in Los Pedregales, a very nice district of Mexico City. But both its motor and hull were in bad shape, and Fidel asked my father if he could repair the motor for him. Noél Guerrero urged him strongly to do so, but my father was cautious and checked first with a number of his communist friends, all of whom said Castro was one of them and should be supported. So my father and I went down to Tampíco and borrowed a truck from Petróleos Mexicanos [PEMEX], went to the Granma and took the motor out ourselves, loaded it into the truck and took it to the shop of a friend in Tampíco, Luís Sígri, who owned a company where it could be overhauled, Talleres Electromecánicos on Avenida Tamualipas. It was a large motor and fairly expensive to repair, but Sígri did the work and my father arranged for all the costs to be charged to PEMEX, where he was then deputy director of maintenance and warehouse operations. I would never say my father stole anything, but he did recuperate the costs of fixing that motor. We then took it back down to the Granma, which was tied up at Santiago de la Peña in Túxpan, and put it back in. While we had been doing the motor, another friend, also a Marxist and labor activist by the name of Sr. Decado, had repaired the hull, so once we finished the Granma was ready for Castro to use.

When Castro and his men got out of jail they went to live in the home of a woman named María Antonia, who provided them with room and board, paid for by my father from STPRM union funds. They also went back to training for war, this time with Mexican government blessings. It was arranged for them to be helped by a retired Mexican army general, and they were also given more than enough money to live well. I used to go see them at María Antonia’s house, which was in a fairly nice part of town at 49 Calle Amparo, next to the Social Security building, and sometimes went out on the town with them. Castro’s men lived it up like good Cubans, going out almost every night drinking. They also had a very good cook from Cuba, Zabalú,